tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post4765695535428066349..comments2024-02-20T12:26:24.682-05:00Comments on language goes on holiday: I don't read, I just guessDuncan Richterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15708344766825805406noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-28582520823549178082011-08-18T12:39:24.369-04:002011-08-18T12:39:24.369-04:00Thanks, Tommi.
I agree with your point about it c...Thanks, Tommi.<br /><br />I agree with your point about it cutting both ways, I think, although it's a point that deserves more consideration than I've had time to give it yet.<br /><br />As for the distinction between Wittgenstein's personal views and his philosophical remarks, as you say, it's one I think is important. But if we want to understand why he makes these remarks it might help to understand him. If he has deliberately left his own judgment out of it then we will misunderstand the remark if we read such a judgment back in to it. But if we want to know why he made the remark in the first place then it might, I think, help to know his views on corbels and the like. (Of course it might not help, and might even be misleading.)Duncan Richterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15708344766825805406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-17843643573088944792011-08-18T09:56:43.322-04:002011-08-18T09:56:43.322-04:00Secondly, the corbel that supports nothing is like...<i>Secondly, the corbel that supports nothing is like a piece of machinery that does no work. Asking for a philosophical account of rule-following is idling, the question an occasion of language going on holiday. But there are reasons why we ask, as there are reasons why someone might want a purely decorative corbel.</i><br><br>Yes, exactly. When <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=pKOKndpBLdgC&lpg=PP1&hl=fi&pg=PA73#v=onepage&q&f=false" rel="nofollow">Wittgenstein discusses Heidegger's "The Nothing noths"</a> in the "Dictation for Schlick", he uses his customary image of an idling wheel, but he asks the Heideggerian using such language: <i>why</i> precisely are you using it, what is <i>involved</i> in your using it? And not only will he stay around for an answer (unlike the average harrumphing positivist critic of Heidegger), but goes on to say: "I am ready to go along with anything, but at least I must know this much. I have nothing against your attaching an idle wheel to the mechanism of our language, but I do want to know whether it is idling or with what other wheels it is engaged."<br><br>I think there may be a danger here of importing our knowledge of Wittgenstein as a person - his being influenced by Loos, designing and building a modernist piece of architecture himself, etc. - to the interpretation of his philosophy. (A bit ironically, you yourself have traditionally been keen on warning against this danger, to the extent that I've felt you've overdone the warnings sometimes. The fact that even <i>I</i> see the danger may hint that it is real in this case!)<br /><br />In the <i>Lectures on Aesthetics</i>, I, §§33-34, Rhees asks Wittgenstein about his "theory of deterioration" and <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=njMBZkDSjk0C&lpg=PP1&hl=fi&pg=PA10#v=onepage&q&f=false" rel="nofollow">Wittgenstein replies</a>: "What I do is describe different things called deterioration. I might approve deterioration - 'All very well your fine musical culture; I'm very glad children don't learn harmony now.' [...] [T]he word may be used without any affective element; you use it to describe a particular kind of thing that happened. It was more like using a technical term - possibly, though not at all necessarily, with a derogatory element in it."<br><br>Similarly, he might approve of a sham corbel, I think.Tommi Uschanovhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02852865209279310471noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-33779041513646998672011-08-18T09:53:57.391-04:002011-08-18T09:53:57.391-04:00And the stock exchange is the only thing he's ...<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DbLvyLfHQSbY" rel="nofollow">And the stock exchange is the only thing he's qualified to quote us</a><br><br>(Just kidding.)<br /><br /><i>When a metaphysical-sounding question is not in fact a scientific one (in which case it's OK, I would think) then is it actually a kind of subconscious yearning (is that too strong a word?) for something like a creation myth? Or a certain kind of religion?</i><br><br>This cuts both ways, I think, and it's hard to tell which way is either quantitatively more common or philosophically more problematic than the other. I mean that it is equally possible to yearn mistakenly for a banal, scientific, unmetaphysical explanation for some experience or impression that just <i>is</i> aesthetic, metaphysical, or otherwise "nebulous" in some way or another.<br><br>Cioffi discusses this in <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=NaZRqzrj6YsC&lpg=PP1&hl=fi&pg=PA94#v=onepage&q&f=false" rel="nofollow">Section IV</a> of his "Wittgenstein and the Fire-Festivals". One of his examples is someone's being impressed (we might say "metaphysically" impressed) by the awesome look of the night sky and going on to train as an astronomer ("indoors monitoring bleeps", as Cioffi puts it). Another example is someone's being enamoured of the stereotypical romantic image of ancient China in Western popular culture and going on to study the largely banal political and economic history of ancient China. Cioffi wants to put in a good word for thinking that this kind of inquiry simply misdiagnoses the nature of what the inquiry is meant to give answers to, and he argues that this is analogous to Wittgenstein's criticisms of Frazer for misdiagnosing the deep and sinister impressions made by rituals such as the Beltane fire festival. It may be quite hard to give oneself psychical "permission" to just be satisfied with one's impression of the rituals, the night sky, or whatnot, and not go on to paint it to oneself as some kind of unscientific or escapist "wallowing" for which there is a cure - much less a cure that is not worse than the disease.<br><br>To your question whether the misdiagnosed object of yearning is "something like a creation myth, or a certain kind of religion", Cioffi says that it is "something like Spengler's prime symbol or Goethe's <i>Urphänomen</i>". The influence of both Spengler and Goethe on Wittgenstein has of course been well documented.<br><br>But what about the sham corbel - doesn't Wittgenstein mean to <i>criticise</i> it, to slash it away with Occam's razor like his architectural role model Loos? I think it's important to note that, in the passage under discussion, he remarks only that "we sometimes demand explanations for the sake not of their content, but of their form". Not that we <i>unfortunately</i> do so, that we <i>regrettably</i> do so, or anything of the sort. Noting that we do sometimes demand explanations for the sake of their form may <i>itself</i> be one of those situations where we reach bedrock and say that this "simply is what we do". (There is not, so to say, any "explanation that would be <i>this</i> explanation, only demanded by us for the sake of its content".)Tommi Uschanovhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02852865209279310471noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-86987975214604093152011-08-18T09:39:18.967-04:002011-08-18T09:39:18.967-04:00This comment has been removed by the author.Tommi Uschanovhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02852865209279310471noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-14576936032289219632011-08-18T09:36:58.232-04:002011-08-18T09:36:58.232-04:00This comment has been removed by the author.Tommi Uschanovhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02852865209279310471noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-63759747234112142592011-08-18T08:33:35.186-04:002011-08-18T08:33:35.186-04:00True. Maybe it's better to avoid any general n...True. Maybe it's better to avoid any general name and just to examine questions one at a time. If a pattern emerges we could then see it without having to label it.Duncan Richterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15708344766825805406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-89108789587843079942011-08-18T00:21:30.394-04:002011-08-18T00:21:30.394-04:00i know—i was just thinking about the term of criti...i know—i was just thinking about the term of criticism, 'metaphysical' / 'metaphysics'. it doesn't seem to travel very well from audience to audience.j.https://www.blogger.com/profile/09002699528461726304noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-78934769235230615132011-08-17T20:58:11.747-04:002011-08-17T20:58:11.747-04:00Thanks, j. Hmm. Speculative? Philosophical? In gen...Thanks, j. Hmm. Speculative? Philosophical? In general I mean the kind of question that Wittgenstein took to be characteristic of philosophy, and in particular I mean such questions as "How am I able to follow a rule?" and maybe "Why does the sun rise every day?" (or whatever question might be 'answered' by "Because of the laws of nature").Duncan Richterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15708344766825805406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-29686213287223143462011-08-17T18:30:52.275-04:002011-08-17T18:30:52.275-04:00song titles are necessary.
can you reframe your f...song titles are necessary.<br /><br />can you reframe your final questions without using the word 'metaphysics'?j.https://www.blogger.com/profile/09002699528461726304noreply@blogger.com